The Austin boys' swimming and diving team came home Saturday from Minneapolis with a state champion, but a fifth- and 11th-place finish from its other two competitors were in many ways just as impressive.

Senior Beau Webber, in his fourth and final state appearance, went wire-to-wire in capturing the 1-meter diving title, seizing the lead after the preliminaries and never relinquishing it. He outpointed his main competitor, Section 1A foe R.J. Rappe of Farmington, 427.10 to 411.70.

Teammate Ryan O'Leary followed up his success at the Big Nine Conference meet and sections by medaling with a fifth-place finish of his own.

"I was hoping for top eight going in," O'Leary said, "so doing this well hasn't sunk in just yet."

Despite being a bit overshadowed this season by his teammate's success, O'Leary is anything but resentful.

"Beau's really helped me through it since he's been here so many times before," O'Leary said of his first trip to state.

On the swimming side, the 200-yard freestyle relay team of Derek Hall, Carl Bauer, Josh Hall and Ethan Simonson overcame a ranking of 17th going into the state meet by finishing 11th in Friday's preliminaries to qualify for the finals.

The Packer foursome wasn't happy just to be there, and they bested their preliminary time by five-hundredths of a second to finish 11th in the final rankings with a time of 1:33.21.

Scoring as a team, the Packers tied for 15th out of 30, finishing with 46 total points. St. Thomas Academy, the reigning Section 1 champion, turned in a dominating performance to win it all and successfully defend their Class A title with 342.50 points.

"I was so happy with the whole weekend and for all these kids," said AHS diving coach Jason Smith. "They've had a great run."